


My Honour in your Hands

by Aviss



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon - Book, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25932601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/pseuds/Aviss
Summary: Jaime lasts the better part of a day before the silence gets to him.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 72
Kudos: 232
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	My Honour in your Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mgsmurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mgsmurf/gifts).



> mgsmurf wanted a canon coda, a missing scene from either book or show canon. I have to admit I'm a sucker for some book canon angst, so I tried my hand at it. I hope you like it!
> 
> Dear mods, thanks for organizing this whole madness, it's been a lot of fun to participate

Jaime lasts the better part of a day before the silence gets to him. 

He's followed Brienne out of his camp just on her word and the elation of seeing her again, alive if not well, and as dour and sturdy as he remembers. It's an impulse, one he's not sure where it comes from but that he doesn't question, to silently steal into the night with her, abandon his position and his men for the chance of--of what, he doesn't know. Jaime has never cared much about Sansa Stark, his last chance for honour he called her when gifting Brienne with the sword and the quest, but even then he had been more preoccupied with Cersei's coldness and Tyrion's fate and the mess the Kingsguard had become, than honouring his oath to a dead woman. Had cared more about getting the wench out of King's Landing than the fate of the little Stark girl.

That hasn't changed much, Jaime still can't muster more than a faint concern for Sansa, just a trickle against the rushing river he feels at the sight of Brienne's wounds. 

It's this, more than anything else, what's spurred him to follow her. For Brienne, stout and stubborn Brienne, to ask for his help the situation must be dire. 

Even if she's lying to him like he knows she is. 

He's followed her through the Riverlands for hours, riding in silence after the first hour when Jaime tried to extract information from her and encountered nothing but bald-faced lies and skittering eyes. The wench is ill-suited for lies, they show too easily in her wide eyes and blushing face, and they both know it. And Jaime's grown weary of both the silence and the lies after almost a day of both. 

He spies a house, little more than a hut, decrepit and clearly abandoned, on their path, and he makes up his mind in a minute. 

"Lady Brienne, we're stopping here," he says, sees the twitch in her shoulder that indicates she has heard him before turning his horse in the direction of the hut, not bothering to check if she's doing the same. 

She is, what else can she do? She needs him to go wherever she's taking him.

"Why are we stopping in this place, Ser Jaime?" She asks as soon as she's reached him, still atop of her horse though Jaime has already dismounted and is hobbling his, tying it to the fence next to the hut. "We're just a few hours ride to where the Hound is with Lady Sansa and there's still some light, why stop now?" She insists, clinging to her lie like a toddler to their mother's skirts.

" _Are we_?" he asks and doesn't bother to conceal the scepticism in his tone. 

She blushes, her face splotchy with it where it's visible under the stained bandage on her face. "Yes."

"I tire of the long ride," he says, _and of the lies_ , he doesn't voice but it hangs loud in the air between them. Jaime turns his back to her and rummages in his saddlebags for the little provisions he packed. She had been in a hurry, back at the camp, and Jaime had not taken anything but what was readily available in his tent. He's realizing his mistake now, he's hungry and that always makes his temper fray, he needs to keep his head if he's going to get the truth out of Brienne. "I'm hungry, the Hound will have to wait a few hours more."

She wants to protest, it's clear on her face, an odd sense of urgency in the way she bites her already abused lip and tightens her grip on the reins of her horse. She lets out a long and shuddery exhale, and her own exhaustion is evident in that gesture, her shoulders sagging and her back bending like a marionette with the strings cut. "Of course, Ser Jaime." 

She dismounts then and follows him inside the hut. 

The door is open and the inside of the hut is cold and musty, clearly having been abandoned for a while already. There's just a cot with ratty blankets on top and a table with a couple of chairs, a hearth with a pot hanging from it and desiccated and rotten food in a small larder next to a counter with a few old dented bowls and plates. At least there are no corpses, a blessing considering the state the Riverlands are in. 

"Sit," Jaime commands her, and surprisingly she does without objection this time, taking one of the two chairs by the table. 

He takes a moment to decide what to do, then goes back outside and picks some of the wood he saw stacked against one of the walls. It's covered in snow, but a few of the logs at the bottom of the pile are still dry and they will serve for now. He goes back inside, Brienne is still sitting unmoving where he left her, staring into nothingness as he drops the logs in the hearth and searches for something to start the fire. It takes him longer than he'd like to admit to get a fire going, but he's grateful for the light and the heat it provides once he does. He goes back outside with the pot and fills it with the cleanest snow he can find, then places it over the fire and takes a seat on the table, facing Brienne. 

They stay like that for a moment, sharing what little food Jaime brought and eating it methodically, the bread and bits of meat tasting of sawdust in the oppressive silence. In the light of the fire, she looks even worse, as if she's aged several decades in the span of a few moons, the responsibilities she took upon herself and the ones Jaime placed on her shoulders weighing her down. 

"Where are we really going, Brienne?" He asks when it looks like she'll spend the rest of the night in silence.

She opens her mouth, clearly ready to insist on her tale, but whatever she sees on his face makes her close it again, averting her eyes. "You know there is no Hound," she finally says, her voice little more than a rasp. "He's dead, and I don't know where Lady Sansa is."

"I know." There is no point lying, though he's much better than her at it. "I've known from the beginning."

"Why then? Why did you come if you knew I was lying?" 

Why indeed. It's a question he's been asking himself the entire time they rode, further away from the protection of his camp and his men, firmly into the territory roamed by the Brotherhood Without Banners, those bandits that are so fond of hanging Lannister and Frey they can only be led by a Stark. Jaime's wondered once if it might be Sansa leading them, only to dismiss the idea as a silly fancy. The girl is all of ten and three, maybe ten and four now, and had the sweetest of dispositions if he remembers her well; Sansa had not been a lioness or even a wolf but a little mouse. 

War changes people, though. It changed him for the worst, and now it's changing him again, he hopes for the better but that remains to be seen.

"Because you asked it of me," he admits.

There had been no other thought in his head when he saddled his horse, even while knowing she could be leading him to a trap. 

It's this simple admission that finally makes her eyes turn to him, startled and huge and oh so blue. Jaime had not misremembered that colour. "They want your head," she blurts, the words torn from her in a rush of breath. "I couldn't let Pod die, but they want your head and I can't--I won't give it to them but they'll take the boy's instead if I don't, I can't--" she stops, abruptly, her words tripping all over each other as her eyes shimmer with tears. She grits her teeth, a gesture clearly painful judging by the hitch in her breath, the wound on her face paining her as much as her arm and ribs, her movements stiff and her breathing shallow. 

Jaime stands suddenly from the chair, face frozen in anger and hurt at her admission, and doesn't miss Brienne's flinch. He takes a deep breath to calm himself and moves past her, grabs a small bowl from the detritus of what would have been the kitchen and takes it outside for rinsing with some snow, letting the cold air clear his mind before going back in to pour hot water in it, Brienne's eyes following his every move warily. 

He rummages around until he finds the things he needs, some shirt that looks clean and can be ripped for bandages, and some of the ointment for his stump he always carries in his bags. When he gets back to the table, Brienne has gotten herself under control, eyes and cheeks dry and hands flat on top of the wood. Awaiting judgment. 

"Let me see to your wound," he says, instead of the thousand other questions he should be asking. 

Her hand trembles a little as she lifts it and pulls at the bandage covering it, reveals a horrifying gouge on the meat of her cheek, bloody and messy and red with flakes of old blood and inflamed skin. It looks painful. "Tell me what happened, " he says, dipping the cloth in the water, his voice much gentler than even he had expected, his anger vanishing on the face of her hurt. "Tell me everything."

She does, voice stuttering when he starts cleaning the wound, holding her chin with his golden hand and trying to be as gentle as she was when Brienne was the one cleaning filth of his body and pus from his stump. She tells him of her slow trek asking for her sister, a girl of three and ten with auburn hair, and the disheartening lack of news everywhere she went, her voice little more than a pained whisper. Tells him about finding Podrick Payne, his brother's squire, and the boy following her on her quest, then finding an old acquaintance in Maidenpool, some knight from her days at Renly's camp, and him joining her company as well. Jaime feels some uncomfortable twinge at that, but dismisses it quickly, focusing on his task and her voice. She tells of the fight at the Whispers, where she faced the nightmares of both their pasts and took revenge for both of them, voice breaking at the admission that she killed them. 

She killed all three of them and the world is a better place for it, even if she mourns that it's her hands that got bloodied in the process. 

Jaime wants to interrupt her there, give some comfort, but fears the flow of words will get halted and he's greedy for it, wants to know everything she's done and everything that's happened to her on this quest he foisted on her, wonders what would have been different had he been by her side. He's no fighter, not anymore, but would she look less haunted had he been with her? Would she have picked up strays and ended up with rope burns around her throat?

He learns about the Hound, the real one, not the lie she has fabricated, and the younger Stark girl being alive and with him for a time, and the Quiet Isle where she rested on the way. 

"It was Biter," she finally says, her voice hoarse from talking. Jaime has already stopped cleaning her face and has rebandaged her cheek, his hand clenching around the now bloody cloth before he drops it on the bowl. "Right after I killed Rorge." That makes six of the Brave Companions the wench has killed, including Hoat, and where another person would brag or sound elated of having rid the world of such evil, she just sounds tired and sad. "I was wounded at the Inn, and when I woke up, the Brotherhood had us." 

There is more to tale there, something that makes her face flush even under her current pallor, but she doesn't say anything more. Jaime wants to push, he said _everything_ , but then her hand twitches in the direction of her neck, an aborted gesture she tries to cover when she sees him noticing. Jaime purses his lips and tugs down at the collar of her doublet, already knowing what he's going to see there. 

The mark is an angry red around her neck, looks painful and feels raw under his fingertips, gentle as they are, they make her tremble. "It's Lady Catelyn," she says, finally her tears falling and soaking the new bandage and falling on Jaime's hand where it's brushing her neck. "Lady Stoneheart, she's Lady Catelyn."

Jaime believes her, impossible as it is for Catelyn Stark to have survived, and understands. "So you're taking me to her, you couldn't take my head but you're taking me there so she can do it herself."

Brienne closes her eyes, pained. "No. Yes. I don't--" she can't continue, hanging her head and shaking with all her grief and guilt. "I don't want to, but they have Pod and Hyle. I couldn't choose so I got the noose, but they were killing Pod, and I chose." She looks up at him for a moment, beseeching. "I don't know what to do anymore."

"What's to stop me from killing you here and going back to my men?" Jaime muses out loud, though he has no hope of beating her in a fight with his left hand if it came to that. Nor he has any desire to do it, not really. "You've given me enough details that I can take them to the inn and have that Gendy boy lead me to the Brotherhood."

"Would you--?" she starts, voice muffled and rough. She looks up again, despair and a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "Would you make sure Pod gets out alive when you do?" Not if, when. As if that's an acceptable solution. "He's just a child, I won't fight if you promise to get him out alive, if you give me your word."

As if his word has ever meant anything to anyone.

"Stranger take you, wench!" he snaps at that, stumbling away from her, his anger coming back full force. He's more furious at the idea that Brienne believes he would kill her than at the lies and the trap she's leading him to. "I'm not killing you, though I almost did exactly that by giving you that damned quest."

She blinks at him, surprised by his outburst. "What are you going to do, then?" 

He doesn't know, they are both too drained from the day's ride and the night's confessions for his mind to find a solution. "For now, we're going to sleep." 

He helps her stand and leads her to the cot, and she follows meekly. She allows him to remove her boots and the sword belt, placing it and the sword he gifted her by her side, then watches as he does the same before gently pushing her down onto the cot, lying next to her and covering them with the blankets. 

The cot is small and they are both big enough they are pressed tightly together, closer than Jaime has been to another person, to another woman, in too many moons. That it's Brienne, the wench who dragged him around the Riverlands and then cared for him, gave him back the fire he had been missing for so long, doesn't feel strange. It feels right, even when he should be angry, furious at her for her trickery. 

He is, but he's angrier at himself for having dumped it all on her and washed his hands of it. He said it was for his honour and then let Brienne, unblooded and starry-eyed as she was when she left King's Landing, almost ruin herself to restore it. He doesn't feel honourable now, doesn't feel like a knight.

He can feel her trembling against him, can hear the sobs she's trying to muffle against the dusty pillow. He turns to her and places his hand on her shoulder until she moves, rolling to face him, her tear-stained face barely visible in the dark. He's never done well with crying women, and her misery tugs at something inside of him. He wordlessly opens his arms to offer what little comfort he can, and she stares wide-eyed for a moment before she scoots forwards, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, her tears soaking his shirt. 

"I'm sorry, Jaime," she whispers against him. "I'm so sorry."

"Sleep now, wench," he says, softly, his words barely brushing over her hair, "we'll think of something to get your Pod out of there tomorrow. We'll do it together. Sleep now."

She doesn't say anything, but her shaking abates and her tears stop soon after. 

Jaime watches her and plans until sleep claims him as well.

...


End file.
